


Home

by Melkur_Mistress



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Belonging, F/M, Fluffy Ending, Missy ignores the cracks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 13:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16064285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melkur_Mistress/pseuds/Melkur_Mistress
Summary: Missy wakes on the forest floor after faking her death. Realising she is alone, she teleports out and lands in a peaceful world where she is embraced for her brilliance. It's idyllic and becomes her home, until one day things start to feel wrong. She hears voices which are new but oddly familiar. Eventually it all comes crashing down, but what is on the other side? Ends with a whole lot of fluff.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> I have updates ready on my two WIP's, so will get those out soon, but this just jumped out at me this morning. Thanks for reading!

_She was really quite the expert at feigning death - she focused on doing it this time through sheer will alone, and an upgrade to her corset that she had spent years perfecting. She contemplated how talented at it she actually was as she slowed her heart beats, calmed the adrenaline coursing through her veins, and tried to remain deathly still._

_The fact that she had invented a process to suspend her life signs and effectively paralyse herself if energy blasts hit her corset shielding, should have given her a flash of pride in the moments before her hearts stopped, but the shielding was pierced and the searing pain in her scorched flesh was ruining the glory of the moment._

_Still, there was little choice, as being sliced and diced and turned into a hideous mechanical shadow of herself was not appealing._

_Her breath seized and she lost consciousness._

_She woke to find the simulated farm turned into a charred, ruined world - but the fire and fight now a dying moment in the past. It had passed her by, her systems slowed to near death for long enough that the Cybermen had walked right on by._

_Sitting up, she groaned in pain, her hand grasping at her lower back. This was why she needed that 3D printer. The Doctor’s suspicious refusal (and rightfully so she admitted to herself, as she did have devious intentions) had meant she was left with very crude tools to manufacture her shielding._

_She got to her feet, closed her eyes and focused. The Doctor was no longer here, that much was certain. Probably regenerated, assumed her dead or gallivanting about the stars leaving chaos in her wake with her past self._

_What a mess._

_She used her last escape plan - pulling out the broken teleport bracelet from somewhere within her jacket, and hoped that the work she had done on it would be enough._

_She activated it._

 

**Six months later.**

 

The sense of calm within her was becoming familiar - it had struck her one warm summer night, as she laid in bed, awake and formulating her plan for the week. Perhaps this was what peace felt like - her mind was not idle, not as it had been in the long years of the vault, but she didn’t run on adrenaline in the way that she had when her plans were playing out to her design, and the thrill of danger and chaos surrounded her.

The only ache she felt was for the Doctor, but she pushed it away and focused. She had a home - people who looked up to her, although that was never what she had sought from them. They gravitated to her when she first arrived, appearing in their peaceful town out of nowhere and falling to the ground in pain.

They had assisted her, and had quickly been impressed by the way she explained her injury and talked their finest medics through the procedures she needed to heal her injury. She had fallen into a healing coma, and the experts had taken the invasive liberty of scanning her once she was unconscious. She awoke as a medical curiosity, and it had taken hours to explain how her two hearts interacted with her system and the differences in her biology to theirs. Mostly because more and more people kept joining her impromptu seminar and she had to keep starting again from the top.

She left the hospital, declining their pleas to assist them with research, she wasn’t after all, a Doctor. Soon she had found a place to stay - temporarily while she worked on a vortex manipulator, her only plan now, to return to her TARDIS. The technology of the world was of a high enough standard that she knew it would be possible, eventually. A remote call was impossible given the distance and the resources she had access to, so she focused her work on getting off the planet.

That was the plan anyway. As the months passed, although she would never admit it, she had began to settle. She had a large home on the far edge of the town - enough distance that she wasn’t pestered by the natives too much, but not totally isolated. The climate was pleasant, never harsh and changeable as it could be on other worlds, and the calm nature of the population was a welcome break from having been thrust into a colony ship with people fighting for their lives.

It became home.

She had never really felt at home before. And so she wilfully ignored the glaring cracks in her perfect world and embraced it.

Over time she had become to appreciate the advanced technology of the planet - it was not a problematic world, it’s rulers soon showing her respect and seeking her counsel on their experimental research projects. She found herself working with them, and within days leading a team of scientists and engineers. She really had just wanted to work on her vortex manipulator, but the experiments they were working on were potentially very useful and possible - they just needed to be organised and their process refined. She obliged.

She could share knowledge, assist them, use her mind that had been idle for far too long. Eventually she found that she had gone days, then weeks, without thinking about her vortex manipulator. After all, where would she go? The Doctor, likely regenerated and quite possibly believing that she had turned away from him, wasn’t an option. She wasn’t going to go running to him and explain herself. In time, she would check in, from a distance. Maybe visit him at some point. He would have new pets to fuss with now. She didn’t need him. Of course she didn’t.

She quickly wiped away a tear, admonishing herself for not believing her own lie. She _did not_ need anyone, least of all the Doctor. She was fine. Totally fine.

Days later, her perfect world became wrong, flawed, cracked. She sat in her garden, sipping tea - a warm gentle breeze adding to the beauty of her private haven. She listened to the sounds of the stream that ran along the back by a low stone wall, she had never felt more at peace.

Suddenly she froze, as voices began speaking all around her. She sat up, alert and looked around, seeing nobody. They continued, unfamiliar and muffled.

“Missy?”

Her eyes widened and she pulled up her sleeve, immediately tapping a button on her bracelet. She focused, the sonic bracelet scanning the area around her, but no life signs appeared present.

“Missy,” another voice moments later, an odd familiarity about this one despite the accent that she couldn’t quite place. “You’re taking it too far this time.”

Missy tensed, this felt wrong, very wrong.

Over the next weeks she heard muffled voices many times, but it was unclear and she could not make out the speech. She consulted a psychiatrist, who she told her entire timeline too. He was appalled at first, but then seemed to relax and attempt to help her.

She sat in his office, worry etched into her features as he regarded her.

“I need an assurance from you that you won’t harm anyone, we are a peaceful planet - we abhor violence and cruelty.”

“I just want to live my life here, I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Missy said. "I promise you, I am not the same as I was back then."

“If other people learn of your past they will not want you living among us. Whatever you have contributed to this society - and your contributions _have_ been vast, you will still be exiled.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Missy said, feeling tears forming fast. “This is my home now, I don’t want to leave. I promise you i’ve changed.”

“What if the voices you’re hearing are part of a more entrenched mental instability that could make you a danger? I will keep your secrets for now, but if I fear you will harm anyone, then I will speak against you. I’m sorry, but I have to.”

Missy cried for the rest of the session, trying to explain her relationship with the Doctor, but only seeming to make herself sound more and more of a risk the more she spoke.

“He had hope in me, and no one else ever has. He’s the only person I love, have ever loved, and the only person who has ever had any faith in me. I miss him but I don’t know what my place in the cosmos is anymore - or if I can go back. He promised me a thousand years, but he probably thinks I walked away. Or he’s properly dead this time, and I can’t bear that. This is my only home now, and I _have_ to stay here.”

Except now her home, her safety, was overshadowed by the threat that her confession could destroy the life she had built.

* * *

 

She sat on a wooden bench in her garden, her eyes focused on the ripple of water in the stream and began to cry.

“Can I help?” an unfamiliar voice, on the edge of her mind.

“No, but thank you. I’m going to stay here for a while,” another voice. Both women, one with an accent that she vaguely placed  as earth.

“Ok, but you look tired, you should rest.”

“There’s a perfectly good bed here, I can rest when I need to.”

Missy got to her feet and looked around the garden, she was alone. The sound of a door closing startled her and she snapped her head round to look across her garden. Her doors remained open.

She called the psychiatrist who now regarded her somewhat cautiously as she explained the auditory disturbances. She watched him in confusion - he seemed different. When he spoke, his voice shocked her - the voice that he spoke was a woman’s, and the words were not those of a psychiatrist, not at all.

“I’m done with these games Missy, come on don’t do this. All these lives, all these games you've played - it's time to stop,” he paused, and when he spoke again there was a desperate, almost broken edge to the woman’s voice. “Please Missy... _Master,_ _please_.”

Missy wrapped her arms around herself and started to cry, her eyes wide with shock.

“What is this?” she whispered through her tears.

The psychiatrist stared at her, his expression giving no reaction until he spoke again, the woman’s voice somehow channelling through him now seeming so familiar that she wanted to scream in frustration at her inability to understand what was happening.

“Missy, it’s been far too long, your higher brain functions are spiking, you’re alive. You can just come back to me. Please - Master come back to me.”

The psychiatrist stood, walking to the mantel shelf above the exquisite fireplace and took hold of the carved wooden clock in both hands. He turned around, hurling it to the ground. It shattered, the splintered wood littering the floor and Missy stared at him in shock.

He turned to her, staring hard as the now familiar woman’s voice channelled through him, shouting, now desperate and full of emotion.

“MISSY WAKE UP!”

* * *

 

The Doctor sat next to the bed, her hand clasped in Missy’s, wiping her tears away as she stared at her still form. She turned her attention to the monitors, all confirming how well she had done. Her condition had been critical at first, but she was now stable. Her brain functions were erratic at times, but she was alive and should have been able to communicate at the very least. But Missy remained deathly still on the bed in the Doctor’s TARDIS.

“Missy, what am I doing wrong? What have I overlooked?” the Doctor said, taking a steadying breath to reign in her emotions and focus.

_Missy stood and walked across the room to stand facing the psychiatrist, “what’s happening? I AM awake!”_

“Wait,” the voice channelling through the man in front of her said. “The spikes in your brain activity...if I can cause some more..and amplify them...that could be enough. Look, Missy, if you can hear me at all, even if it's a buzz in your subconscious, please, just give me a reaction. I’m not letting you give up this easily, and when have I ever given up on you. This game, this game we play, it has to stop. No one wins if one of us dies, really Missy they don’t.”

_Missy put her hand to her head and turned around in shock, pacing the room rapidly until she returned to the man standing motionless by the fireplace. She stepped closer and reached out with both hands, gripping his shoulders firmly, digging her nails in as her grip became more intense and determined, “Doctor?! Can you hear me?”_

The Doctor froze as Missy shifted, her lips barely moving, but it was movement nonetheless. She was responsive, for the first time in three weeks, she was responding to her.

She squeezed her hand and leaned over, her other hand moving to her head, gently stroking her hair.

“Come on Missy, fight this, you’ve been through worse, open your eyes and look at me.”

_Missy stared at the expressionless man in front of her and began to cry as the sound of a sudden heavy rainfall began to violently crash down all around her. She glanced around and watched as the room began to dissolve, almost as though the rain were eating it all away. In seconds, the walls had dissolved around them and she stared in dismay as the gardens and trees surrounding the house began to dissolve._

_“Doctor? I don’t know how to wake up! Please help me!” she cried, giving the man’s shoulders a hard shake. “Doctor!”_

The Doctor leaned over her and placed a kiss on her forehead, then as she inched back, froze at the sound of a whisper coming from Missy’s lips. She hovered over her, listening intently, and her hearts rose as she heard the sound again.

“Do….Doctor...I don't…”

“It’s okay Missy, just open your eyes, look at me,” the Doctor said with tears in her eyes.

_Missy dropped her hands from the man’s shoulders and hugged herself as she closed her eyes and cried hard, “I miss you,” she sobbed. “The whole world is dissolving and I want to see you.”_

The Doctor inched back, observing the monitors, and realising that her brain activity was spiking, she quickly passed a slight electrical current through the equipment.

In seconds Missy’s eyes flew open and she glanced around wildly before grabbing at the the Doctor’s jacket and attempting to pull herself up.

“Where...am I….Doctor? Doctor…” she sobbed, confusion and panic swarming her. “Doctor...am I alive?”

“Yes Missy, you’re alive,” said the Doctor, smiling through her tears and she helped her into a reclined position, and trying to make her comfortable. “Don't try to get up. You’ve been in a coma for three weeks. I’ve never been so pleased to see you.”

“Three weeks? I...no, I was there for six months…” Missy said, and then began to focus as she met the Doctor’s eyes. “You....changed...I like it.”

“Thanks, I do to,” the Doctor smiled, then sighed as she leaned forward and placed another kiss on her head before dropping heavily into a chair next to the end, never once letting go of her hand. “It is _so_ good to see you.”

Days later, as they sat together, the remains of an evening picnic discarded on the blanket in front of them, Missy turned to her and smiled, “this is...nice, I mean that.”

“The picnic?” the Doctor said.

“You, me, under the stars, the food is irrelevant...we just haven't been together under the stars in a long time,” Missy said. “I am grounded in reality Doctor, I don’t disappear into a  fantasy world..i don't know why it was all so vivid.”

The Doctor smiled and took her hand, “because I think you felt lost and maybe a bit scared, and you want a home - so you made yourself one, where you could be the brilliant person you are, but your mind was playing with the notion of using all that brilliance for good. Will you still let me help you with that?”

“I’m not letting you lock me in a vault again, i’m gonna be very clear on that point,” Missy said.

“Of course not, you’re long past that. Stay with me...you’re on a huge journey with all this, i’d be honoured to take that journey with you, and help you...when you need me to.”

Missy’s hearts leapt at the Doctor’s words, and she smiled, “only if you let me drive.”

The Doctor laughed, “ok, but no experiments without running them by me - is that a deal?”

“I can live with that - so you’re not locking me in? I can go out?” Missy asked.

“Yeah, but maybe we can just...exercise some caution with that to start with...just because you haven’t done that for a while...but you’re not a prisoner...we’re just….friends, travelling together - I thought that…”

Missy cut her off mid sentence as she made a quick move and took her in her arms and pulled her toward her, her lips pressing with considerable tenderness against the Doctor’s, but rapidly changing to eagerness as she parted her lips.

They kissed, the Doctor wrapping her arms around Missy to keep her close, as Missy ran a hand through the Doctor’s hair, exploring her new form with interest.

The stars surrounded them, waiting in silent promise for the life they would finally share together.


End file.
